double-edged sword

Everything is teaching me a lesson. I have realized that acceptance is liberating. Not fighting the flow brings relief. Throughout my adult life I have found the rat race to be tiring and frustrating in that you can never get ahead. No matter how much more wealth you accumulate, the demands increase to the point where more is always asked of you. Work more. Earn more. There's bills to pay. Buy more stuff you want with the extra money. Get a bigger house and stretch your pay. Need more! On and on it goes.

There has been a synthesis of understanding in conjunction with my spiritual path. The advice of the maestro rings true when he exclaims, "There's always more." The pronouncement had a double meaning. He knew it, but it's fun to throw it out there and have the student forever chase the adventure. You see, there's the accumulation of knowledge which I did through books, and then experiential exploration of physical locations on earth. Then came the exploration of the subconscious through psychedelic substances. Inner exploration is brimming with the knowledge a man like me seeks and in conjunction with the search is a fear of the unknown which makes inner exploration quite the adventure. In his books about the teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda writes about the "Man of Knowledge." Through mental challenges, peyote, and mushrooms, Don Juan imparts his knowledge to Carlos. Carlos admits to being as thick as a brick and doesn't understand the knowledge right away. The same is true with my psychedelic experiences where the information I gleaned was immediately spun by the mind to fit into my personal narrative. It was only after discovering the deceit of the ego that I was able to integrate what I was shown in vision and extract the alchemical gold.

Understanding is a way off from ceremony. What it is you seek is all revealed, and the unfolding comes through the passage of time which bequeaths the understanding to the attentive student. A good teacher does not give the show away, but instead guides the student to the tools which will allow them to solve the puzzle or understand their predicament. The maestro has been through the process themselves, knows what it takes, and is keenly aware that the student must realize the answers through their own faculties for understanding. Telling the student, "There's always more," is a double-edged sword. Failure to marinate knowledge into understanding might lead you onto a path of an accumulation of contradictory knowledge that becomes a tangled web of incoherence.

So, there's an accumulation of knowledge. There's an integration of that knowledge in order to understand it. I have left out wisdom so far. What's wisdom? Well, let me give you an analogy. When you feed a dog, a dog will keep eating until they vomit. The same is true with knowledge and understanding. I can keep accumulating knowledge and transmuting it into understanding until I vomit. There is always more! Wisdom is knowing when you are full. No one else is going to tell you when you are full. Instead, they will do the opposite. They will always tell you there is more. There is another mountain to climb! Hey, you got to try this new flavour. It goes on and on. Recognizing you have had your fill allows you to put your fork down and walk away from the table.

I intuited when I graduated from the lessons from my shadow and onto the path of the heart that this was my last stop. I found the answer I was looking for, well, I found it a while back, but I didn't understand it. I still had to accumulate knowledge and get understanding of my incarnation. I did all that. It has been over a 15-year collection of knowledge exercise and I'm past 10 years of being involved with plant medicines. Wisdom finally came to me a short while ago and told me I was full. I kept seeing more on the menu and thought maybe I should try a new dish, but Sophia sat me down and said I have all I need. Follow the path to the heart. Remember the lesson of the simpleton with the open heart is wiser than the man who knows everything and owns the world. I remember that lesson well from over five years ago. I remember being taught the knowledge of the divine outpouring of love, and being allowed access to the Garden of the Heart for a short while before being kicked out when the drug wore off.

This wisdom I have found very practical for my material life. I do have enough, and I lead a simple life. I look at my bank account every month and wonder how I am going to pay all the bills now that my children have immersed themselves in post-secondary education? There's tuition, rent, food, transportation, and entertainment. There is constant pressure to make more money and provide. This can be very draining. After fighting the flow for so long, I finally learned to let go. Personally, I don't need to accumulate more. In fact, I want less. Recently has been a purging of physical attachments. I took so much to the curb so the garbage truck could haul it away. I felt relief in letting go of the metaphorical physical attachments which felt like a lifting of life that weighed me down. Being light and free is exhilarating. I realized to let go and go with the flow. Allow the work to come to me, earn money, and then support those who need it. I don't need it. I have been blessed and discovered everything I came here for. Why do I need to accumulate more? Instead, I can be of service and help others find their path. That leads to another conundrum. I know we all have a personal reason we incarnated and it's a puzzle of life to find out the reason. I want to tell people to devote all their time to discovering the reason, but I realize it doesn't work that way. They must do what they do, and hopefully this will lead them to seek out answers. I will be like the maestro and point them in the direction if they are receptive, but I won't tell them the answer. Everyone must find that out for themselves.

Here I am, a pilgrim taking the left-hand path of the heart, one step at a time back home. I don't need anything else. I have it all.

good guy

The war in Ukraine has driven one point home to me that coincides with my psychedelic experiences. I want to identify with the good guy; so, in my inner journeys, I become the light and objectify my shadow as the other. I claim the moral high ground and deny responsibility for the darkness in the world. I did it often enough so that eventually the realization that I'm both the good guy and the bad guy whacked me over the head like the blunt force trauma of a hammer.

When I consume mainstream corporate news, I am told the same thing. We in the west are the good guys and the Russians are the bad guys. The other is designated the “evil empire.” The language used is simple and makes me laugh. Professional people in suits, holding positions of power within the cultural west, constantly use the term "good guys" and call Russian leader Putin the "bad guy" or they position the conflict as good versus evil. Those old enough will remember 43rd US President Dubya and his "evil-doers" phrase, spewed forth in an acquired southern drawl. A cursory look at western behaviour over the last two decades clearly contradicts this narrative but the presentation is so simple and compelling, thus speaks to us directly because we all want to believe it. I'm the good guy. I kept doing this during psychic exploration. Eventually, I had to give it up in order to understand who I am. The same challenge awaits the west.

I didn't want to accept responsibility for the horrible acts I support, perpetrate, and unleash upon the world. I stand back and say, "That's not me. I'm not dropping bombs or purposely starving non-compliant nations." In order to live a life of economic dominance, we privileged countries need third world countries to enslave and pillage of their natural resources. If we participate, the affluence trickles down to us in western society while the elites directly enrich themselves through graft and corruption of their vassal states.

What you desire is what you will manifest. For some, the deepest of their desires are buried far down into the subconscious. If you are suffering, ask yourself why? If you find yourself in a war-torn shithole there may be a reason for it and it begins with self. The journey inwards will reveal it is you who makes the world come alive. You are responsible. You are the magician. Eventually, you will have to accept you are also the bad guy or the lesson plan will grind to a halt. We all identify with the good guy, or we are striving to become just like Christ. We further bury our darkness without integrating all back into a wholeness.

So, on the road to becoming reconciled there may come a point when you welcome your brother back on to the throne of self and stop objectifying him as the other. Perhaps you will then have a dream which will reveal to you the secret of all secrets. What you desire is the impetus behind all that manifests in the world. From my perspective, all events that occur in the world timeline are a product of my desire system and what I wish to have come about. The world is divided into have and have nots because I wanted to live a life of having, but not too much that would draw attention. I needed to not be too immersed into fulfilling all desires lest I totally forget why I’m here. The spiritual path would be hard to justify if I were rich. I mean there is that passage in the New Testament about the rich man and the eye of a needle. Here’s the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19 (King James Version):

23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

When I first discovered my shadow and objectified him, he scared me. He appeared to me because it was what I wished for. I wanted to find out why I had this dark side to me, and I wanted to reach some sort of closure. I thought I could get rid of my darkness and become ultra-holy. I mean that’s the achiever part of the spiritual path. What a journey this has been. He has taught me so much. After he scared the shit out of me and I ran, eventually I returned. I laid down some ground rules where the coming tribulation would not affect my family. He threatened me with death on this voyage and I accepted that as an outcome.

Fast forward to the next phase of the lesson plan and I see the pandemic is of my own making. My shadow is the expert weaver who takes this world event and applies it to my teachings. He can take disparate human journeys and create a world where the events that are transpiring all line up and have meaning for us as a way to correspond to what it is we ultimately desire. For most of the world, the virus is another random threat on the road of life trying to inculcate a sense of urgency concerning the mortal coil but for me it is a major lesson on the path towards self-awareness of who I am. This is what I wanted. It’s my innermost desire. I wanted to figure out the mystery of life. The isolation forced me to reconcile all my lessons and discover the truth about myself. Without the full-stop I would have continued on the path of consciousness exploration without a total full integration of all I had been shown. When I was ready, he introduced the sacred mushroom and made me quite aware of my psychic split. From this standpoint I had to then figure out the rest of the story and drop my prejudice. My prejudice was continuing to objectify him as the other and the bad guy. Once I saw through my refusal to accept what is, I got the answer I was looking for. I clearly saw it is I who brings this world to life. The power is in my hands.

I have had some good teachers on this path. The maestro don Howard warned me of this power though at the time I didn't know what he was really talking about. Yeah, power corrupts, I know. I have heard the stories and warnings. I've read books by Carlos Castaneda where he tells tall tales about his run in with this power. Sure, it's mostly fiction but it is grounded in truth.

Indeed, it is I your humble writer, who is not really real. The identity I cloak myself in is a sham. I’m playing it small, not wanting to bring attention to myself or admit I hold all the cards in my hands. I am the light, and I am the darkness. I’m the good guy and the bad guy. I am a saint and a scoundrel. Charitable and a thief. This facade of self is the vehicle I chose to reconcile the two brothers within who constitute my essence and this life project is a build that is ultimately focused on finding common ground. There is to be a meeting in the middle, in the heart space of acceptance and love.

When you drop your small ball identity and see through the veil of self you discover two. The prism refracts into objects of self. Being free, the project of discovery allows you to integrate the two back into the one. You will find out who you really are.

Let me further explain: I have come forth as masculine and I see two within my psychic split. I drop the identity of this lonely and helpless dude, reconcile my power, and discover I am the divine masculine power. The process is similar for the feminine. She reconciles with her origin and discovers she is the divine feminine. The process of letting go of objectification then allows the two powers to enter into a state of union once again. The sacred marriage constitutes just what is. The sexual union of the two merges all back into totality. The sacred triad of the two into one.

Can this union last forever? I think we all know the answer. The two will birth the next iteration of creation.

A great gift is the gift of motion. What defines creation is a state of cyclic coming and going. Definitions and objectification fall away because transformation is the name of the game. On and on it goes. I salute you, dear reader, and what you have put into motion.